Course Objective: Learn the Concepts, Gain the Skills and Pass the Exam with Confidence
Understand the "why"
Gain confidence in each exam topic
Be familiar with the NCEES® Handbook
Develop basic HVAC Practical Knowledge
Develop speed and avoid common mistakes with practice
Complete ALL course practice problems
Aim for 75% correct average on practice exams
Ask lots of questions!
Students that have passed average about 200-300 hours of study time. This of course, varies by person and experience. See the pass rate link in the next section for survey results.
Exam Scoring
There is no penalty for wrong answers, so if you are stuck on an answer, use your best judgement and process of elimination. Remember not to get bogged down by one question, move on and come back to it if you do not immediately know how to solve it.
Passing Score
The passing score is not published, since the exam is scaled through psychometric statistical calculations. However, based on past surveys, cut scores are usually around 57/80 correct.
Exam Scoring
The scoring is done by ranking a bank of questions based on difficulty, and comparing the scores against actual practicing professional engineers. One additional change to the CBT is that out of the 80 questions, 10 are test questions that will not be included in your final score. These questions are inserted to test their viability for future examinees. So really, your passing score will be out of 70, not 80.
CBT vs Paper/Pencil
The pass rate for the CBT exam as of January 2021 is 75% for first time test takers, which means 75% of test takers passed. From April-July 2020, the CBT pass rate was 79%. The first CBT exam was in April 2020. The last paper-pencil exam back in October 2019 had a pass rate of 69% for first time test takers and 77% in April 2019. Not enough data is given, but in general it appears the CBT exam is on par with, or slightly more manageable than the paper-pencil exam. The main difference seems to be that time is not as much of an issue, since the ability to dig through extensive resources is no longer an option.
NCEES® Exam Outline
The NCEES® HVAC PE Exam Syllabus defines the topics that will be tested and how many questions to expect per topic.
The EPG course and textbook covers all topics. Throughout your studying refer to this syllabus to make sure you are comfortable with all topics or flag the subjects you struggle in.
The exam is 80 problems, 8 hours. Approx. 6 minutes/problem. The exam is broken up in two sections with a break in between. You decide how to distribute the time between each section, but once you submit a section, you cannot go back to it.
Total Exam Time: 8 hours
(split between Section 1 & 2)
Total Appointment Time: 9 hours
Total Questions: 80 questions
(split between Section 1 & 2)
Intro: 10 minutes
First Section: ~40 questions (+/- few questions)
You decide when to stop the clock. Once you submit, you cannot go back.
Break Time: Max 50 minutes
Second Section: ~40 questions (+/- few questions)
Clock resumes, ends at 8 hours total test time. You cannot go back to the first section.
Computer Based Test (CBT) Interface
Split Screen: Side by Side view of Reference & Questions
Exam Day Resource: NCEES® PE Mechanical Reference Handbook.
Provided as Searcahble PDF.
No outside resources.
Download free on MyNCEES.com
Used for all mechanical disciplines (Thermal & Fluids, Machine Design & Materials). Contains extraneous information.
NCEES® has a list of calculators that are allowed into the exam. We recommend the TI-36XPro. The Casio FX-991EX is also a good model. See the links for calculator manuals.
At a minimum, you should be familiar how to use the following functions. This will be key for improving your speed and minimizing mistakes.
Using the solve function
Throughout the course you will notice equations and conversion factors being used over and over again. By the end, you should have them memorized. This will give you the greatest advantage in terms of speed. Examples include the following.
